Duffy’s Last Case My Arse: A Conversation with Adrian McKinty

[Admin_99]

So here we are – The Detective Up Late, the seventh book in the Sean Duffy series… and so some evil rumourmongers say, the last. But it’s the 2020s – everyone has a comeback tour now, so no reason to think Duffy’ll be any different I reckon. 

For Duffy it’s 1990 – a new decade, the same old grinding “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. ‘The grim, greasy, seedy seventies had bled into the violent, neon, awful 80s…’ – a decade that saw 1,200 Troubles-related murders. Nobody in Carrickfergus Police Station is overly hopeful about the new decade, least of all our man, Detective Inspector Duffy.

He’s still that rarest of things – a serving Catholic officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and an Irishman with a taste for a Gimlet. There’s a missing tinker girl, a nervous Supergrass, a cast of dodgy blokes who may, or may not, be connected to the powers that be (whether those “powers” are the English or the paramilitaries), and Duffy’s planning his imminent retirement. Along the way there’s some nifty one-liners and a shootout that would give Sam Peckinpah a run for his money. There’s also a nice tech-free vibe to The Detective Up Late – no mobiles, no google, and a laptop’s still a cheeky wee dance in a back room at a Carrick gentleman’s club (should such an incongruous thing actually exist). 

Duffy’s last case? Say it ain’t so! But it’s Carrick CID – nobody’s talking, you wouldn’t believe them if they did, and whatever they said wouldn’t be worth a shite anyway. So the only thing to do is track down Duffy’s creator, Adrian McKinty (himself a Belfast lad). On this occasion he’s sitting in a diner in Manhattan drinking a beer and ruminating on his boy…

Paul French: Well Sean Duffy’s certainly full of surprises – it’s 1990 and he hasn’t drunk and drugged himself into an early grave. In fact quite the opposite – he’s hitched, got a 3-year-old daughter, cut right back on the fags, bailing on Carrickfergus for Scotland, and not even throwing the radio across the room when Phil Collins comes on – has he gone soft? Or have you? 

Adrian McKinty: There’s a lot of affection for Phil Collins these days. His health hasn’t been great, and some people have nostalgia for the 80s – Miami Vice and that ad where the gorilla plays the drums. I, however, am not a fan of Phil or the other posh boys of Genesis (or any fucker who went to Charterhouse) or their ghastly repetitive soulless music beloved by Tory junior ministers and management consultants. But possibly I’ve become more tolerant as I’ve aged and Duffy not smashing the radio is perhaps a sign of that. 

French: Frankly I’m amazed Duffy survived the 80s, which were just so awful on every level – musically, literarily, cinematically, Docklands Yuppies, otherwise sensible working-class people suddenly drinking rosé and eating sun-dried tomatoes, the nasty never-ending violence of the Troubles – it would have all been too unbearable for Duffy, would it not?

McKinty: When you watch the movie The Long Good Friday (1980), basically everything Bob Hoskins predicted about London on that boat trip down the Thames came true. For me the 70s and 80s aren’t the packaged sounds and images of the Rock and Roll Years but more like a David Peace novel. Peace is a genius. He captures the mood of that time better than any of those fucking Hampstead novels which won all the Bookers in that period. Britain was dark and scary and always falling apart in my memory. Belfast was even more apocalyptic and beautiful and weird. Bombings and riots and packs of weans in the streets playing football and kerby. And vast empty spaces the way London was after the Blitz, the way you see it in those Ealing Studios comedies. But no regeneration at all. Once a cinema got firebombed no more cinema. We got a McDonalds after Moscow did because they couldn’t get the insurance. As far as I know it was never fire bombed because it was too bloody popular. 

French: He’s still checking under the Beemer for tilt bombs, Carrick nick’s still a fortress, British soldiers on the streets, British Intelligence still mind-fucking everyone, and sectarianism’s still the most popular game in town. We’re still eight long, deadly, years away from the Good Friday Agreement. I’m not sure how well he’ll fit the 90s – it’s not a very Duffyesque decade?

McKinty: Things definitely calmed down in the 90s but there was still craziness. I remember taking a girlfriend back home from uni for Christmas in about 1993 and she was pretty shocked by the army foot patrols and a massive bombing that we could hear five miles away on the RUC Forensics Lab. Duffy I think will like the music better however if he lives to hear it. 

French: Duffy’s last case looks like being a missing Traveller girl, someone 99.9% of Carrick CID would not consider getting off their arses for, or a hack reporter writing five lines on. They don’t care about people they consider marginal and trouble, but Duffy does? Against the odds perhaps he’s retained a core humanity throughout the series – that wasn’t true of everyone spanning those years. How does he do it?

McKinty: I think in one of the books someone berates Duffy about not being a very good copper. And he accepts the criticism that he’s no Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple with sudden insights or whatever, but what he is is fucking persistent. He will grind away on a problem OCD fashion until he gets a result. I’ve met a lot of people like that, usually they’re the ones who actually solve the problems, not the flighty geniuses, so I don’t mind making my guy one of those types. And yeah, because he’s an outsider I think he’s willing to dig into a case that other peelers couldn’t ever give a shit about. 

French: Let’s talk Duffy and booze. A few pints of the black stuff for lunch (we’ll overlook his 6-pack of Bass and put it down to lack of choice at the Victoria Estate offy) seems OK to me. And Sean knows his spirits – keeps a bottle of Bowmore for emergencies, a glass of Jura old enough to join the army, an Ardbeg of similar vintage, pilfers a snifter of the chief inspector’s 1939 cognac occasionally. But, has anyone else except Sean Duffy ever requested lime juice (& by that in Carrickfergus we mean lime cordial!), vodka and soda water in a pint glass? And just how stomach churning is it? Though with a fish supper perhaps the teatime treat of champions?

McKinty: I worked briefly in the civil service in Belfast and everyone always tried to get two, or sometimes three, pints in at lunchtime so the afternoon shifts would drift by in a haze. The whisky is an easy one. Everyone I grew up with had a bottle or two of whisky in their house for visitors. A bottle of Johnnie Walker, a bottle of Bushmills and then something that reflected their personality, maybe Bowmore or Jura or Glenfiddich…The vodka gimlets in a pint glass are definitely an affectation. I got them from a guy who lived up the road from us whose girlfriend used to cut the hair of me and my little brother. I don’t know where he got the concept from but his girlfriend had to take breaks from hair cutting to make them for him and I was fascinated watching her. I would have been about 12, she 19, very pretty with a Purdy haircut. He was a real nutcase. Chain smoking, pacing, swearing, 15 years older than her. Went to prison for a triple murder, but then of course released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. 

French: OK – no bullshit, straight up, if I think you’re lying I’m getting the telephone directories out and we can go at it – is this Duffy’s last case? He might have a wife, a wee bairn, a new house in Scotland but Duffy’s only 40 right? Makes that Jock John Rebus across the water look like Linford Christie? I see him, out there in retirement in Portpatrick, on the forgotten edgelands of the vast God’s Waiting Room of Dumfries and Galloway, and I reckon he’ll get fed up of it in five minutes and be back down the station. Tell me I’m right…?

McKinty: I have a feeling that Duffy’s Last Case might be a bit Frank Sinatra’s “Farewell Tour”, but we’ll see. 

–The Detective Up Late (Sean Duffy book 7) is out August 8

___________________________________

Glossary

(facetiously requested by editor, provided in good faith)

___________________________________

Bass: a once ubiquitous brand of British beer you wouldn’t offer your neighbour’s annoying dog.

Beemer: a BMW (a thing rarely seen in Carrickfergus)

Charterhouse: An English Public School (i.e. an extremely private and expensive school) known for turning out slightly dim and vacuous, yet entitled, members of the British Tory (see below) Establishment. 

Docklands Yuppies: a particularly abhorrent variant of the general species of 80s Yuppies known for living and socialising in the Thatcher-era “regenerated” former docks area of East London that became known as “Docklands”. 

Dumfries and Galloway: the most southerly, and some might say most boring, part of Scotland. As it has a quite elderly population of retirees (now including Sean Duffy) it is known as one of “God’s Waiting Rooms”.  

Fags: cigarettes

Fish supper: the name for the proverbial dinner of battered fish and chips anywhere in Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Hampstead novels: the utter low point of English literature. Dreary middle-class monologues of boring affairs and moral dilemmas dressed up as deep and meaningful. Rosé and sub-dried tomatoes (see below) would often be consumed by Charterhouse types (see above). Think Penelope Lively, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan. Fortunately now mostly consigned to landfill. 

Kerby: A ball game played by working class kids in the street, the aim being to throw the ball against the opposite kerb (“curb” in Yank-speak) and catch it on the rebound. In Belfast this game is often treated with the seriousness of the Soccer World Cup. 

Linford Christie: Jamaican-born British former sprinter who won a load of gold medals.

Offy: an off-licence, a shop selling booze for you to drink at home, in the park, your car, or up the graveyard. 

Purdy: a fictional spy working for British intelligence in the 1970s UK TV series The New Avengers played by Joanna Lumley. She had a distinctive haircut that became fashionable. Any healthy male between 14 and 84 in Britain in the 70s lusted after Purdy/Lumley. 

Rosé: an insipid type of wine that in 1980s Britain was drunk only by the idle rich and feckless Charterhouse types (see above). 

Sun-dried tomatoes: a pointless form of ripe tomato that loses most of its water content after spending a majority of its drying time in the sun. In the 80s the consumption of such items in Britain and/or Northern Ireland denoted you as a bit of a Docklands Yuppie (see above) who fancied yourself to be middle class. 

Supergrass: a slang term for an informant who turns King’s evidence, often in return for protection and immunity from prosecution.

The Long Good Friday: a film that if you have not seen it you should….today if possible. The celluloid epitome of the intersection of money, class, and “The Troubles” in 1980s London.

Tilt Bomb: a device usually used in the operation of car bombs relying on the force of a jerk or similar movement for the triggering of the desired explosion. Regularly used to assassinate rivals or RUC officers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. 

Tinker: a person/community who traditionally made their living by travelling from place-to-place mending pans and other metal utensils. The term is linked to some traveling (or colloquially “gypsy”) and Roma (Pavee) communities.

Tory: member of the British right wing Conservative Party. Often spotted in the 80s with neither a chin or spine but drinking rosé and feasting on sun-dried tomatoes and never a fish supper. 

Uni: university. Somewhere only the very few attended in 1980s Britain. 

View the full article